Formative (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Guillermo Acosta Ochoa. Emily McClung de Tapia.

Over the past three decades, there have been very few studies of the earliest agrarian communities in the Basin of Mexico in comparison with other periods. In this paper, we introduce the symposium with an evaluation of the state of knowledge concerning preceramic, archaic communities up to the Formative period in the Basin of Mexico, with particular emphasis on the dearth of information available concerning paleoenvironment and subsistence. We review some of the recent investigations in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martijn Van Den Bel.

This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient ceramics (beyond 2000 BC) have been found in the western part of the Guianas, notably in the coastal swamp areas of Guyana from the 1950s onward (Alaka). They are also known from the Courantyne River in Suriname (Kauri) and have only recently come to light in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catharina Santasilia.

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Formative site of Tlatilco, has like so many other ancient sites, been covered by modern-day urbanization. Many of these sites suffered a fate of early exploitation and looting leaving the archaeologists with puzzles that often lack many pieces. With resilience and patience, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karleen Ronsairo. Jeffrey Blomster. Sarah Breault.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Past studies of early urbanism in Formative Oaxaca, Mexico, have highlighted evidence of the construction of monumental architecture, increased population densities, and the expansion of Middle to Late Formative period occupations onto defensive hilltops. In the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, investigations at urban centers, such as Cerro Jazmín, Monte Negro, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily McClung De Tapia. Guillermo Acosta-Ochoa.

The race to stay ahead of modern human impact on preceramic and early ceramic sites in the Basin of Mexico is particularly dramatic. Recent investigations at sites located in three sectors of the Basin of Mexico, all of which are threatened to some degree, contribute to a broader understanding of the kinds of communities that anticipated increased complexity in social, economic and political spheres that ultimately developed into early urban centers such as Cuicuilco and Teotihuacan. ...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tatsuya Murakami. Diego Matadamas Gomora. Shigeru Kabata. Julieta Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tlalancaleca was one of the largest settlements before the rise of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico. Our ongoing research indicates large-scale urban transformations in the transition from the Middle to Late Formative period. Tlalancaleca during the later Formative is characterized by a multi-centric spatial organization consisting of multiple monumental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Palomares.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multiple lines of evidence, including pottery production, multicrafting, goods and routes of exchange, architecture, and funerary practices, support the idea that Tayata in the Mixteca Alta was immersed in social transformations observed across different regions during the Early/Middle Formative (ca. 1400–350 BC). Changes at this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Freeman. Gideon Maughan. Erick Robinson. David Byers. Robert L. Kelly.

Increases in energy consumption correlate with social and political development in human societies, as well as increasing human impacts on ecosystems. Thus, understanding the underlying drivers of energy consumption in human societies may provide insights into the processes of social evolution and rapid social change (collapse). In this paper, we develop a model of energy consumption in human societies based on population size, economic complexity and temperature. We demonstrate the usefulness...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edgar Carpio.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Known as "The Red Devil" or the "Muñeco", a rock painting in Olmec style, located in the municipality of Amatitlán, department of Guatemala. This was reported at the end of the 70s of the last century and has been visited on numerous occasions by various specialists. In this paper we will present a synthesis of its discovery and the investigations carried out,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

This is an abstract from the "Los Rituales del Juego de Pelota en la Costa del Golfo / Ballgame Rituals in the Gulf Lowlands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El juego de pelota es un tema que ha llamado la atención a numerosos investigadores, algunos se han centrado en el estudio arquitectónico, otros desarrollan enfoques iconográficos o propuestas de rituales basados en evidencias como en el Tajín. En otros lugares, solo se distinguen las...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Love.

The Pacific Coast borderlands of Chiapas and Guatemala were home to at least three major urban centers in the Late Preclassic Period: Izapa, Takalik Abaj, and El Ujuxte. How these sites were related to one another through intellectual exchanges and commerce tells us a great deal about the nature of urbanism in Mesomamerica during the Late Preclassic Period. These three sites were part of a broader southern "City-State Culture" that included Kaminaljuyu, Chalchuapa, and other early urban...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Soren Frykholm.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II, Current Research in Oaxaca Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1930s, the community of Monte Negro has played an integral role in the research projects carried out at its namesake archaeological site. Beyond participating in the investigations of visiting scholars, community members have themselves initiated projects to collect and disseminate local knowledge pertaining to their...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Macarena L. Cárdenas. Frank Mayle. José Iriarte. Silvia Moehlecke Cope.

Understanding the purposes and associations of burial monuments and sacred built landscapes in the Formative period of the Americas is an important research goal among archaeologists. A key step that can help us to better understand the social and spatial organisation of these cultures is determining the ecological and environmental characteristics of the landscapes within which these cultures lived and developed. Created by the Je group in south-eastern Brazil, and with more than 30 pit houses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Strauss.

Epi-Olmec is a nebulous term, adrift in both time and space. Weakly defined by a set of slippery contrasts - isolated from what came before and what comes after - the descriptor lacks robust categorization of its own. And yet in spite of this hollow terminology, the words "Epi-Olmec" themselves are so politically fraught that certain scholars have adopted the even more obfuscatory term "Isthmian", a label growing in popularity within the literature. This paper begins the process of defining...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nadia Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Formative Period, the Teotihuacan Valley’s population was dispersed in small farming settlements in the piedmont slopes surrounding the valley bottom. The end of this period witnessed a dramatic population shift, with the Valley’s inhabitants clustering near perennial streams on the valley floor, along with thousands of new migrants. Erosion is...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Stoner.

This is an abstract from the "El principio del fin, el inicio del principio: Arqueología de la transición del Formativo al Clásico en Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, México" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El urbanismo, en gran parte de las tierras bajas del Golfo, exhibe un patrón de crecimiento continuo desde el período Formativo hasta el Clásico. En muchas regiones, las ciudades más antiguas del Formativo se convirtieron en las ciudades más grandes e...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Yaworsky. Kenneth B. Vernon. Simon Brewer. Jerry Spangler. Brian Codding.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists continue to rely on predictive models that suffer from the same errors that have plagued the discipline for decades: small training sets, improper statistical techniques, and vague or only implicit theory. To address these shortcomings, we develop a framework for modeling archaeological site occurrences with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Collins. Deborah Nichols. Ethan August.

This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian, a volcanic glass, was widely used in Mesoamerica for cutting tools, weapons, jewelry, and ritual objects since the Paleoindian period (ca. 9000 BC). Because its sources have unique chemical signatures, obsidian provides a durable and measurable index of interactions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only S. Maezumi. Jose Iriarte. Diana Alves. Mark Robinson. Denise Schaan.

The scale of pre-Columbian impact on Amazonia is one of the most debated topics in archaeology and paleoecology. To address this issue, an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological soil profiles and lake sediment cores from the lower Tapajos are used to investigate climate-human-ecosystem interactions over the past 8,000 years. Pollen and phytolith data indicate the presence of polyculture crops including Ipomea, Manihot, Zea mays, and Cucurbita. The presence of Theobroma,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Palomares.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of the Zapotec temple, its origins and evolution, has significant implications to understanding the social complexity in early societies. This paper follows the proposal of the one-room temple as the origin of the two-room temple, also called Zapotec temple, and exposes its evolution showing the characteristics of those...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julian Acuna.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Formative (2000–1000 B.C.) period in Oaxaca is generally regarded as a transitional period from the Archaic (7000–2000 B.C.). The early formative is characterized by a change in subsistence, social organization, and sedentism. This period included the emergence of La Consentida, the earliest known settled village in coastal Oaxaca. This paper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Rowe. Guy Duke.

This is an abstract from the "Cuando los senderos divergen: Reconsiderando las interacciones entre los Andes Septentrionales y los Andes Centrales durante el 1ro y 2do milenio AEC / When Paths Diverge: Reconsidering Interactions between the Northern and Central Andes, First–Second Millennium BCE" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Valdivia tradition of coastal Ecuador (ca. 3800–1450 BC) was one of the first sedentary, agricultural, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heilen. Monica Murrell. Phillip Leckman. Robert Heckman.

Analysis of previous cultural resource management investigations conducted in the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico indicate that many data are of poor quality, unstandardized, and of limited utility for comparative purposes or regional planning. Part of the problem is the limited understanding of which methods are best suited for site recording and testing and, more specifically, how observations made at the site surface correspond to subsurface content. This poster presents an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Pohl. J. M. Adovasio. Christopher von Nagy.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite over a century of intense research, little has been published on the non-durable technology of the Olmecs. This is due to the "tyranny" of preservation, which strongly biases the archaeological record in most areas toward durable artifacts. Recent analysis of a probably accidentally impressed potsherd from San Andrés, within the urban polity of La...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Breault. Jeffrey Blomster.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous research on feasting in antiquity has demonstrated the importance of surface appearance and vessel form to interpret the performative aspects of rituals such as feasts. As part of the hosts’ strategies, of particular importance are vessels that invoke exotic imagery and/or outside groups through iconography and or aspects of overall vessel design....